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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28016595">Red Light Blues</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/hackedsaw/pseuds/hackedsaw'>hackedsaw</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Saw (Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Adam Lives, Flashbacks, Post-Canon, Trauma, mentions of scott tibbs</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 21:27:26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>976</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28016595</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/hackedsaw/pseuds/hackedsaw</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>He could see it, hear it, feel it, smell it. The scent of photo developer was back, powerful, the hint of it that had always been there being brought back to life a hundredfold. It used to be comforting, but now it just smelled like formaldehyde. A fucking funeral home. He may as well have been embalmed with it.</p><p>Days Without Incident: 0</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Red Light Blues</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>hey i was feeling some kind of way so i cranked this out. very loosely edited. enjoy.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">Adam wouldn’t tell anyone the truth about why he’d stopped taking photos. They wouldn’t get it, and more importantly, they probably wouldn’t <em>care —</em> Scott wouldn’t, Adam was sure of it. He didn’t care if they didn’t care, though, only that they’d leave him the fuck alone about it.</p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1">Impounded as evidence, he told them all. His camera was gone, as if he didn’t have three other decent things to shoot on scattered around his apartment — <em>were </em>scattered around his apartment, until he’d boxed them up and shoved them under his bed where they’d continue to haunt him like they were monsters and he was twelve. They bought it with halfhearted shrugs and a request that he “keep them posted.”</p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1">The <em>truth </em>was all him, all in his head, all some aversive response to trauma or whatever it was that his therapist had called it. Even the thought of picking up a camera anytime soon made his heart race in some kind of terrible way, to the point that he’d stripped the walls of his apartment of every picture he’d ever taken — every group shot of friends laughing, every house show, every girl or guy whose name he couldn’t remember. All of it.</p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1">Bare walls were just as much of a reminder, though, and he didn’t think <em>that </em>shit was fair at all. He still had posters, he still had stolen street signs that were nailed to the wall at the expense of his security deposit, but everything he’d ever printed by hand was gone and he wasn’t sure if it was for better or for worse. It depended on the day.</p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1">Everything just depended on the day, now.</p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1"><em>This </em>day was a bad one, and all because of a fucking lightbulb. A stupid piece of glass. It was in the room that he’d only <em>just </em>been able to start spending more than five minutes in without having a meltdown — his previously-bathroom-turned-darkroom that he’d spent an entire day tearing apart a week or so after he had gotten out of the hospital. He had flushed all the chemicals, burned the photos, tossed the gear, even bought a goddamn matching shower curtain and rug to make it feel like a different place — but the finishing touch, what had <em>really </em>made the difference, was when he’d switched out the red lightbulbs for normal, regular-people-bathroom incandescent ones. </p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1">Buying the cheapest ones had really backfired when they began to flicker out, and it didn’t occur to him until it was too late that using the old bulbs (<em>they were still good, after all</em>) as a placeholder might be a terrible idea. He should have thrown them away with everything else.</p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1">When Adam flipped the switch it was like he’d been kicked out of an airplane. Crimson washed over the room and engulfed him in the same fear he’d felt <em>that</em> entire night — from the puppet laughter that signaled his doom to the sliver of green light vanishing behind an industrial sliding door. He could see it, hear it, feel it, <em>smell it. </em>The scent of photo developer was back, powerful, the hint of it that had always been there being brought back to life a hundredfold. It used to be comforting, but now it just smelled like formaldehyde. A fucking funeral home. He may as well have been embalmed with it.</p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1">Coping methods were pretty goddamn hard to remember when his brain had been shut off and rebooted to a setting that insisted on replaying that night over and over and over and over and <em>over</em>. He was frozen, finger on the light switch and wide eyes glued to a picture that wasn’t really there of a man that he didn’t really know that would result in the single worst experience of his life. It had been a good while since this had happened.</p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1">
  <em>Days Without Incident: 0</em>
</p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1">He couldn’t will his body to move, the tightness in his chest as immobilizing as the memory of a heavy shackle clamped around his left foot. For a moment, or a minute, or maybe an hour, he wondered if he’d ever gotten out of that tomb or if this was some shitty purgatory he was going to have to live through for eternity. A vicious cycle replaying in his mind post-mortem. He’d never changed those lightbulbs, and he’d never torn up any pictures, and he’d never learned his fucking lesson. This was it.</p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1">Suddenly it was dark, and it took Adam a good while to realize that it wasn’t because he was in <em>that </em>part of the recollection where he was alone in the blackness. Bleeding. Hopeless. <em>Pathetic.</em></p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1">He was in his apartment, and he could hear the birds chirping outside his bedroom window. The stupid little repeating duck pattern on the shower curtain could just be made out in the dim bathroom, and the semi-permanent chemical smell wasn’t surrounding him like he’d been dunked into a tank of it. His hand lowered away from the light switch that he’d apparently flicked <em>off</em>, and he backed away, shutting the door behind him and numbly bringing himself to sit on his sunken mattress.</p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1">With shaky hands, he grabbed a pack of cigarettes from the nightstand, lighting one and sucking it in like it was the oxygen mask they’d strapped to him in surgery two months prior. The doctors had told him to stop smoking, but he figured they would do that in <em>any </em>case — it was a better vice than some alternatives, anyway.</p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1">Adam’s shoulder hummed in quiet pain and his chest ached, a feeling he’d grown so familiar with that the times he <em>didn’t </em>feel that way were almost alien. But he dealt with it. Alone.</p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1">He laid back with a sigh, smoke trailing out of his mouth, and made a mental note to go to the store and buy some fucking lightbulbs.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>comments give me serotonin</p></blockquote></div></div>
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